NTC update: A video letter, and an alum’s proposal for how to save it

Matt Zambrano, a member of the National Theatre Conservatory’s final Class of 2012 and a nationally renowned slam poet, recorded his passionate thoughts on the closing of this “amazing institution.” Filmed at three venues and edited by Amy Kersten. For more information, go to www.thentcfoundation.org

To the Denver Center administration, the announced phase-out of the National Theare Conservatory may be a done deal, but not to its students and alumni.

This weekend, Class of 2005 grad Joshua Landay, currently a cast member of Broadway’s “The Lion King,” submitted a plea and a financial proposal to each of the Denver Center’s 25 trustees.

In it, he outlined ways in which the Denver Center might reduce the current operating cost to run its 28-year-old masters graduate program by 64 percent by reducing class size, cutting the cost-of-living stipend and mandating that students take unpaid teaching positions in the Denver Center’s community outreach programs.

To read the letter and proposal, click “Read more.”

Joshua Landay

To the DCPA Board of Trustees,

I’m writing to you with a proposal to save the National Theatre Conservatory. This proposal is rooted in a recent moment of inspiration: a moment that gave me hope, showed me the promise of theatre’s future, and, at the same time, granted me a glimpse into my past. It was a minute or two, at most, that revealed to me with utmost clarity the necessity of the National Theatre Conservatory.

I was waiting in a long line to enter the Tramway Theatre — which was already packed — for closing night of the NTC Rep’s “Hamlet.” A young boy in front of me looked up at the lockers lining the walls and asked his mother excitedly, “Is this a school?” She didn’t know, and turned to me behind her in search of an answer. “Is there a school here? What are the lockers for?” she inquired. I proceeded to tell her about the NTC — that it was a graduate acting program; that it was the NTC students we’d be watching on stage that night; that it was the NTC students who teach kids like her son at the Denver Center Theatre Academy. “When you’re a student here, you basically live out of these lockers,” I continued, “clothes for movement classes, scripts you’re studying, and costumes for all of the projects you’re working on. And some food to sustain you through it all.”

“Where do I get more information?” she asked. I answered her, but I couldn’t bear to tell her that the NTC was being “phased out” — probably because I still don’t accept that it will be. Think about it: the entire runs of both “Hamlet” and “Tartuffe” had sold out; NTC students were hard at work, finishing one project and beginning another; and NTC alumni were hard at work, too — on Broadway, off-Broadway, in Denver, in Oregon, in NTC-alumni companies — the entire NTC community was as alive as ever.

That moment — the excitement in that boy’s eyes, his need to know more, the desire to see “Hamlet” at 8 years old — made it all clear. The NTC isn’t a limb of the Denver Center, as some have suggested; it is the Denver Center’s soul.

The NTC is the Denver Center’s purest representation of what theatre should be: it challenges, it excites, it entertains, it intrigues, and it fosters the future generations of the theatre. And, as an unsurprising bonus, it sells out. For all of these reasons, phasing out the NTC is diametrically counterproductive to protecting the Denver Center’s future. The best way to strengthen the Denver Center, in fact, is to make the NTC an even bigger and more involved part of the organization.

Great job Joshua on the letter. You outlined something a lot of us already knew…that if money is really the issue here, then there are clear ways to solve that challenge. (hey who says theatre people can't do math?). So now that we know the bottom line numbers and what to do about them….can Mr. Ritchie really claim its all about the finances? And to Matt Zambrano, what a great and artistic articulation of the situation. I love the big picture perspective he has.

Film & theater critic Lisa Kennedy likes to watch -- a lot. She also has a fondness for no-man’s lands, contested territories and Venn Diagrams. She believes the best place to live is usually on the border between two vibrant neighborhoods. Where better to apply this penchant for overlap and divergence than covering film and theater – two arts that owe so much to each other yet offer radically idiosyncratic pleasures? In another life, Kennedy was an Obie judge. In this one, she’s been a Pulitzer Prize judge in criticism, an Independent Spirit Award jurist and Colorado’s first member of the National Society of Film Critics.

More than a mash-up of the Running Lines and Diary of a Madmoviergoer blogs, Stage, Screen & In Between offers engaged takes on Colorado theater and film and pointed views on news from both coasts and both industries. Culture lovers, add your voices. Culture-makers, share your production journal entries and photos.